Under the cover of darkness, Harry carefully follows the diagram in the Invisible Book of Invisibility. He swishes and pokes several times to get the hang of it, but he is rarely able to do a spell on the first try, less comfortable with the wand movements than Hermione, who practices, or Ron, who seems to just know sometimes. He hopes the spell will glow or something so he'll know it is working.

Finally, Harry spits out a mouthful of Latin, hoping against hope that the book is right, and the trace on underage magic only works in muggle areas.

Nothing happens.

Harry's about to perform the spell again when a hint of gold light catches his eye. He spins to the mirror, staring at the faint light radiating from under his robe. He shucks the whole thing off, standing near starkers in the middle of the room. He is glowing. Green and blue and gold and a tiny bit of red. Harry grins at himself, a job well done, and then his smile fades. He is fairly covered in tracking charms. It seems almost impossible that no one knows where he is.

The invisible book lies helpfully on his bed, and Harry flips to the next page to see if perhaps there is a color guide. He's ready to be invisible.

(line break)

Harry was trying not to think of his expulsion as a vacation. It was hard, because his bout of accidental magic had left him looking far enough from his own appearance that he was able to spend time in the wizarding world without being the center of a thousand stares.

His new look was as generic as it was possible to be. Bright green eyes softened to blue, and his messy black hair into neat brown. His skin lightened to a generic tan.

He took a bag full of books to the ice cream shop, because they had outdoor seating, and Mr. Fortescue didn't seem to mind him staying a few hours after he bought a tea and chocolate.

Harry had never minded studying magic during the summer, desperate to hold on to any thread of connection to the magic world. And now that he knew he was a fugitive, his desperation for any and all magical information was verging on swottishness.

After his third day of study, Mr. Fortescue began bringing him extra ice creams during lulls between customers. At first, Harry tried to say "no thank you, I'm good!" Because he didn't want to spend his entire inheritance on frozen dessert. But Mr. Fortescue merely smiled blithely and said, "On the house." And wiped up the surrounding tables.

Harry didn't want to burden Mr. Fortescue, but he didn't know where else to go. Perhaps he could hang out in Flourish and Boots, but they didn't really encourage customers to stay, and he couldn't bring his books. He contemplated just using the books there, but eventually concluded that freeloading at the bookstore would be worse than sitting a bit too long at the ice cream parlor. People sat too long at cafés all the time. There was a fellow who came in the afternoons who Harry was pretty sure was writing some kind of novel.

After a week, Harry gradually began to relax, ceasing to look endlessly over his shoulders for the aurors to swoop down and carry him off to jail. At that point, Mr. Fortescue finally asked, "What's your name anyway, kid."

Harry startled and flubbed over spitting out "Ha-er Neville! Neville Smith." And looked fixedly at Mr. Fortescue's left eyebrow, which quirked in amusement.

"Hmm," Mr. Fortescue hummed, but continued bustling tables rather than calling out Harry's appalling lying. "You going to be studying at Hogwarts this year" he asked, right when Harry thought to go back to his book.

Harry gripped his book "I really hope so."

"Oh yes, they don't send out acceptance letters until early July, do they?" Harry shook his head, slightly indignant that everyone kept assuming he was a first year, but mostly remembering that he was a fugitive and any wrong guess wasn't a right one.

"I really hope I can go."

"Well, you're a bright lad, reading all those big books, even if you don't make it to Hogwarts, you're sure to make it into one of the hedge schools. I know that's not what young people want to hear, but if you study hard and work on technique, you can go far even without a lot of raw power."

Harry... hadn't realized that Great Britain had other wizarding schools. Why hadn't Hagrid gone to another school after he'd been expelled?

"Did you go to Hogwarts Sir?" Harry wondered if he were speaking from personal experience.

"Ah, well yes, I did. Fortescue is an old family, so our kin get marked down from birth, regardless of power. But I had a childhood friend who went to the Scottish School of Magic, and she's a professional arithmancer! Has an amazing head for numbers, that one."

"O-oh? What does an arithmancer do?" Harry only vaguely remembered that arithmancy was a class he didn't sign up for at the end of his last semester at Hogwarts.

"Something to do with architecture, in the planning stages." Harry debated whether to nod in understanding or not. "Oh, well. Magical building. She builds magic into equations that help builders set up a magical building to expand and so forth. If they just charm them, the charms tend to go funny after a few years. It's why it's such a big deal when wizards get caught modifying muggle houses. Death-traps, all of them."

An image of a blue Ford Anglia living savagely in the forest flashed before his eyes. Oh.

"That's really cool!" Harry said instead of shuddering, not sure what he could contribute to the conversation.

Mr. Fortescue ruffled his hair and left him to his book, but after the silence was broken, Mr. Fortescue made it a point to talk to Harry every day.

He hadn't realized initially how isolated he had felt, stranded in the middle of Diagon Alley with not a soul who knew his name. He hadn't even worked up the courage to send Hedwig to Ron or Hermione, so despite being free from the Dursleys, his summer had been as lonely as ever. If very much more magical.

But magic couldn't make up for everything. And those little bright spots of conversation began to mean everything to Harry, beyond the fascinating look into the Wizarding World from the perspective of someone who seemed to know everything and everyone in it.

(line break)

Florean wondered when he should tell the lad that he knew he was Harry Potter. It wasn't a hard connection to make, if you were in the know.

He was actually surprised that the disappearance of Harry Potter hadn't rated the Daily Prophet. He had a dark feeling that Albus Dumbledore was hoping to keep things quiet until the school year had started and it could no longer be concealed. But what really concerned him was the Ministry's collusion. He'd seen aurors questioning people up and down the alley.

He was actually curious how the Boy-Who-Lived had hidden himself so neatly when anyone with logic could guess that the random parentless child wandering around Diagon every day was the other missing, parentless child they were all looking for.

But Florean hadn't spoken up.

Honestly, at first he hadn't known who the boy was. No one had announced his disappearance, and as a purveyor of ice cream desserts, he saw a lot of children who wanted to drop their pocket money sans parental supervision.

It was only after he'd seen the same child day after day, quietly reading and eating as slow as possible, as if worried he'd be kicked out for loitering. Not typical behavior for a child with parents waiting for him.

In fact, Florean had begun to suspect he was a runaway by day three. He knew children, and children were not generally content to sit and read textbooks for hours and hours. It wasn't until he heard the backchannel whispers that the Boy-Who-Lived had disappeared, and that maybe Sirius Black had kidnapped him for some dark ritual? That he made the connection.

He still didn't say anything though. The boy didn't look like Harry Potter, and Florean knew they didn't teach human transfiguration until NEWT level. But, for all that he had apparently found an impenetrable disguise, Harry Potter was actually a fairly terrible liar.

The only reason he hadn't tried to contact the Aurors is that he didn't think Sirius Black had Harry. If he did, the boy was with him willingly, because he had all the time in the world to escape and had chosen to spend that time reading instead. If the boy wasn't with Sirius Black, and somehow wasn't using his own face, well, that might be the safest place for him.

Try as Dumbledore might to suppress word from getting out, it was nevertheless common knowledge that Harry Potter had had some pretty dangerous 'adventures' at Hogwarts.

Florean had only a vague knowledge that the boy who lived stayed with some muggle relations, but he knew that Dumbledore must have quite a large say in the boy's magical guardianship decisions, because any reasonable parent might have yanked the boy right out of that school after a professor tried to murder him. If it weren't for the important ties that Hogwarts had to the Wizarding Government, and the stellar educational reputation it still had somehow despite steadily declining test scores in a variety of subjects, Florean was sure that parents would be flocking to the other wizarding schools to provide a safer educational environment for their darling children. It said something about wizards that very few had made that move.

Still, ambition was a powerful thing, and ambition for one's children even more so. Florean himself had been planning to send his daughter to Hogwarts despite everything. He still might, if he had the choice.